Poem Time: It’s Ok

The sand ran through my finger tips while whole being bathing in beaming sun

Shores showered with the smiles of my people.

We were immersed in laughter as the children played

And she told me it was ok to cry

Snatched from our homes

Villages Desolate

Stacked in Wooden coffins that ranged in hundreds of feet

Comfort not an option

Women and Children killed as a reminder of how they loved us

Fear our daily bread

Pride broken as the body of Christ

Gulping gallons of our own blood for communion

And she told me it was ok to cry

Family legacy’s lost in the shadows of the Auction block

Cattle’s hurdling for slaughter house preparation is more humane

Watching my mothers and fathers be torn away from my brothers and sisters

Field hands and handmaidens with forced grins

Cowering at their captors every whim

Lashed backs and Noosed necks

Raped daughters and castrated sons

They took our belts to try to take our self respect

A reminder that we are only 3/5 of a human being

And we’ve played right into their hands

So she told me it was ok to cry

With Raised fists in the face of oppression

And revolution as our nectar we stand

We grow, Hope and pray that one day we smile again

That one day we are immersed in laughter as our children play again

That the shores of this land can be showered with the smiles of my people

We have sacrificed too much to expect so little

We have lost too much to not want to find who we are

Yet you would never know this from what we feed ourselves and our children

Now we Place our legacies on the auction block

We tear our own families apart to the point that it’s an Art

Beautifully Framed and ironically Hung for all to see

For all of this she told me it was ok to cry

Now why aren’t you?

-J GLASS